


Brains

by evilhippo



Category: The Wire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilhippo/pseuds/evilhippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Bunk and McNulty's minimalist, single-word-oriented crime scene investigation.  This time, with zombies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novembersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/gifts).



Gruesome would have been the most accurate word to describe the crime scene. Instead, the first word used to describe the crime scene was:

“Brains?”

Jimmy McNulty surveyed the splatter pattern against the wall. It was four o'clock in the morning and the triple-homicide they'd drawn seemed like a particularly cruel affront to their current desire to be less-than-sober.

Bunk raised a knowing eyebrow. “Brains,” he agreed. There was no mistaking their particular viscosity, though he'd rarely seen them applied to a surface with such force without any apparent murder weapon. No casings, no bullet holes. The victim was covered in what appeared to be claw marks and had no head left to speak of, and what was left of the second appeared to be mostly affixed to the ceiling. The third had left a trail of his or her own blood that led out of the room, but they would certainly have bled out somewhere nearby.

“Brains,” McNulty replied in a tone of wonderment mixed with disapproval, something that, loosely translated, would have meant something like “it's like a fucking Tarantino scene in here.”

The second victim chose this moment to dislodge from the ceiling in a most egregious manner, leaving both the detectives coated in a fine layer of gore.

“Brains!” Bunk hurled the word like a curse as he wiped the mess from his face. McNulty bothered with nothing of the sort. In the red haze that clouded his vision the grey matter on the wall began to seem like a terrible waste.

“Brains...” McNulty muttered.

“Brains,” Bunk couldn't help but agree, this time lamenting the distinct lack thereof.

The pair shambled out of the room and made their way out onto the street. They navigated Baltimore on instinct. The brains downtown weren't very plentiful, and the chase was always the same series of hoops and nonsense.

They walked west. The brains of the fiends and the slingers were more varied and some made the world unsteady and surreal even beneath the shroud of undeath, but ultimately they, too, didn't satisfy.

There was one brain in particular, though, the thought of which hung in McNulty's mind like a great, giant golden beacon-brain of personal victory and vindication. It was a brain that would be as rich as dozens, maybe hundreds, of other brains.

The beacon was strongest in a certain condominium complex, but the buzzer proved too complex. He squinted at it hopelessly, drooling slightly before beating his head against it in defeat. Bunk took it upon himself to pound on the window, summoning the doorman to their aid. Instinct dictated that, when met with confusion, he was to hold up his badge. It was enough to get the doorman to open the door.

His brain had a slight rum and coke aftertaste.

The elevator proved similarly impossible, but the promise of brains propelled them ever forward, up the emergency stairwell and, finally, to an unremarkable door.

Instinct and memory can propel the walking dead indefinitely, but instinct and memory does not discriminate against outdated information. The door was unlocked. Inside the condo it was dark, sparsely littered with boxes and coolers. Had either of them had complete recollection of their memories, they would have remembered that the brain that used to inhabit this space had long since passed.

Instead, what they found beyond the boxes was the bleeding edge of a new underground industry. The corpse of Stringer Bell greeted them both with a handshake and an incomplete smile.

“Brains?” he offered, indicating an array of specimens in jars, each type marked by differently-colored lids. An indecorous line of Pavolvian spittle dribbled from their lips.

“Brains.”

**Author's Note:**

> Novembersmith, I saw your prompt for a Zombie Apocalypse AU, and this is somehow what lodged itself in my mind. I hope you'll forgive me for not including any of your requested characters; right now I'm pretending that Omar is out there fulfilling his true destiny hunting down the zombie brain fiends, but this is the story that wanted to be written first. I hope you like it anyway!


End file.
